PIRUS2, sponsored by JISC (the United Kingdom Joint Information Systems Committee) built on the outcomes and recommendations of the original PIRUS (Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics) project, also funded by JISC, which was completed in January 2009. The full report of the original PIRUS project may be found at: http://tinyurl.com/PIRUSreport1

The original PIRUS project demonstrated that it is technically feasible to create, record and consolidate usage statistics for individual articles using data from repositories and publishers, despite the diversity of organizational and technical environments in which they operate. If this is to be translated into a new, implementable COUNTER standard and protocol, further research and development will be required, specifically in the following areas:

Technical: further tests, with a wider range of repositories and a larger volume of data, will be required to ensure that the proposed protocols and tracker codes are scalable/extensible and work in the major repository environments.

Organizational: the nature and mission of the central clearing house/houses proposed in the original project has to be developed, and candidate organizations identified and tested

Economic: we need to assess the costs for repositories and publishers of generating the required usage reports, as well as the costs of any central clearing house/houses; investigate how these costs could be allocated between stakeholders

Advocacy: the broad support of all the major stakeholder groups (repositories, publishers, authors) will be required. Intellectual property, privacy and financial issues will have to be addressed

The objective of PIRUS2 was to address these issues and by doing so specify standards, protocols, an infrastructure and an economic model for the recording, reporting and consolidation of online usage of individual articles hosted by repositories, publishers and other entities.